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Baldwin  A time capsule has been unearthed in a church that Baker University plans to relocate to its campus.

A surprise discovery has made Baker University officials even more excited about a new building project.

John Fuller, director of news services at Baker, said workers recently found a time capsule while dismantling an English church that will be rebuilt at Baker.

"They're shipping it here, unopened," Fuller said. "We have no idea what's in there. We're very anxious to find out, and we're anxious to put together our own time capsule that we'll put in the building."

The capsule was laid in a cornerstone during 1864, the year the church was built in the village of Sproxton, 60 miles north of London. Last year, Baker announced that it had made arrangements to relocate and rebuild the Methodist church on its campus in Baldwin, 15 miles south of Lawrence.

The university has not set a date for the capsule opening but will probably schedule a ceremony, Fuller said.

Fuller said the first shipment of dismantled stones arrived in Baldwin last week, after being shipped by train to the English coast, by boat across the Atlantic and by truck from New Orleans to Kansas.

More shipments are expected over the next month. On Friday, Fuller estimated, fewer than 50 percent of the blocks had arrived.

"Each rock is separated from the others, very carefully packaged, and each stone is marked with a code that indicates where it goes when we rebuild it," Fuller said, adding that the stones were being kept in a covered pile near the building site.

Workers have removed trees from the site and have built the exterior foundation, he said. If shipping goes as scheduled, the rebuilding project would start sometime in October.

"Hopefully around sometime in early November, you'll be able to see the shell of the chapel," Fuller said.

The university hopes to complete the project by next spring.

"Then during the 1996-'97 school year, we'll have a formal dedication," Fuller said. "We hope to have members of the church in England on hand, and we hope to have as many of the people from the village as possible."

The chapel will bond Baker, founded in 1858 by pioneer Methodists, to the country where the Methodist faith began. The church in Sproxton closed in 1988.

The project was created through a $1 million gift from R.R. Osborne, a retired banker and philanthropist from Olathe.